Morralla Esmeralda Quotes

A map of Esmeralda should include, marked in different colored inks, all these routes, solid and liquid, evident and hidden. It is more difficult to fix on the map the routes of the swallows, who cut the air over the roofs, dropping long invisible parabolas with their still wings, darting to gulp a mosquito, spiraling upward, grazing a pinnacle, dominating from every point of their airy paths all the points of the city. ~ Italo Calvino

A Magnificent Banquet, being
A Thanksgiving for the Safe Return
Of our Beloved Daughter,
Princess Esmeralda.
Bring your own plates. ~ Angie Sage

The night before I left my mother, I wrote a letter. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

In the twenty-one years I lived with my mother, we moved at least twenty times. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

How can you know what you're capable of if you don't embrace the unkown? ~ Esmeralda Santiago

Esmeralda, don't blame your brother for his girlfriend's lack of wits, Sam admonished. ~ L.D. Davis

Esmeralda?" Scarlett turned to the witch next. "Don't you want to do magic, again?"

"Of course I do! It's the only thing I dream of. Casting spells… Turning people into frogs… Genetically engineering my gingerbread army… ~ Cassandra Gannon

Never was keener anguish lavished upon a thing more charming or more delicate. ~ Victor Hugo

That's what got her, of course. That everyone thought it so unbelievable that she could possibly attract a man like him. It shouldn't upset her because it was true. She couldn't. Not in this world, in this lifetime. Yet she didn't appreciated everyone else acting as if they were the most improbable twosome since Quasimodo hit on Esmeralda. ~ Jo Leigh

Ana had experienced reactions like Ramon's in the mirrored salons of Sevilla society, in the waxed halls of the Convento de las Buenas Madres, on the streets of Cadiz and San Juan. It was a look that said, "I see you, but I deign not to speak to you." It said, "I see you but I do not share the high opinion you have of yourself." It said, "I see you but you're not who I want to see." It said, "To me, you don't exist. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

...and the shortcuts through the woods that led to the next barrio where all sorts of pocavergüenzas took place. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

People think [immigration] is only about the dollar, but it's so much more complex. This is a place where you can reinvent yourself. I don't know that you can do that anywhere else. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

Poor L.
We are sorry that you left so soon. We are even sorrier to have inveigled our Esmeralda and mermaid into a naughty prank. That sort of game will never again be played with you, firebird. We apollo [apologize]. Remembrance, embers ans membranes of beauty make artists and morons loose all self-control. Pilots of tremendous air ships and coarse, smelly coachmen are known to have been driven insane by a pair of green eyes and a copper curl. We wished to admire and amuse you, BOP [Bird of Paradise]. We went too far. I, Van, went too far. We regret that shameful, though basically innocent scene. These are times of emotional stress and reconditioning. Destroy and forget.
Tenderly yours,
A & V (in alphabetic order). ~ Vladimir Nabokov

If you don't exist in the arts of a culture, you're invisible. The arts are what express the soul of who we are and that expresses our humanity. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

The cure for her happiness was not bad luck, but to make her happier inside. Esmeralda ~ Tess Uriza Holthe

If she had not been a gypsy, and if he had not been a priest ~ Victor Hugo

We came to Macun when I was four, to a rectangle of rippled metal sheets on stilts hovering in the middle of a circle of red dirt. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

We're always going to have prejudices ... I don't think we can change society. You can only change individual by individual. And you can change yourself. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

There were more fights, more arguments, more yelling in the night, more long absences. Until it seemed as if anything would be better than living with these people who hated each other. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

Why was I not made of stone like thee?
Quasimodo[to a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire]. ~ Victor Hugo

I dressed to their murmurs in the other room, their voices soft but strained, and I wondered if men ever talked like this, if their sorrows ever spilled into these secret cadences. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

You asked me why I saved you. You have forgotten a villain who tried to carry you off one night,- a villain to whom the very next day you brought relief upon their infamous pillory. A drop of water and a little pity are more than my whole life can ever repay. You have forgotten that villain; but he remembers."

~Quasimodo to Esmeralda~ ~ Victor Hugo

What doesn't kill you, makes you fat. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

They have no achievements of their own. They've made nothing, created nothing, worked at nothing. They will leave no trace that they ever existed. They have no legacy except for their names, which they did nothing to earn. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

You're not going to die," Mama said sternly.
"Darling," Esmeralda barked. "Everyone dies. The trick is to try to have some fun in the doing of it." Ch 6, page 41 ~ Sabrina York